Walpole, speaking of the death of the Princess Caroline, the third daughter of George II., says: ‘Though her state of health had been so dangerous for years, and her absolute confinement for many of them, her disorder was, in a manner, new and sudden, and her death unexpected by herself, though earnestly her wish. Her goodness was constant and uniform, her generosity immense, her charities most extensive; in short, I, no royalist, could be lavish in her praise. What will divert you is that the Duke of Norfolk’s and Lord Northumberland’s upper servants have asked leave to put themselves in mourning, not out of regard for this admirable princess, but to be more _sur le bon ton_. I told the duchess I supposed they would expect her to mourn hereafter for their relations.’ The princess died in December 1757, and early in the following year the King was seized with a serious fit of illness, which terminated in a severe attack of gout, ‘which had never been at court above twice in his reign,’ says Walpole, and the appearance of which was considered as giving the royal sufferer a chance of five or six years more of life. But it was not to be so; for the old royal lion in the Tower had just expired, and people who could ‘put that and that together’ could not but pronounce oraculary that the royal man would follow the royal brute. ‘Nay,’ says Lord Chesterfield to his son, ‘this extravagancy was believed by many above _people_.’ The fine gentleman means that it was believed by many of his own class. It was not the old King, however, who was first to be summoned from the royal circle by the Inevitable Angel. A young princess passed away before the more aged Sovereign. Walpole has a word or two to say upon the death of the Princess Elizabeth, the second daughter of Frederick, Prince of Wales, who died in the September of this year. The immediate cause of death was an inflammation, which carried her off in two days. ‘Her figure,’ he says, ‘was so very unfortunate that it would have been difficult for her to be happy; but her parts and application were extraordinary. I saw her act in “Cato” at eight years old (when she could not stand alone, but was forced to lean against the side-scene), better than any of her brothers and sisters. She had been so unhealthy that, at that age, she had not been taught to read, but had learned the part of Lucia by hearing the others study their parts. She went to her father and mother, and begged she might act. They put her off as gently as they could; she desired leave to repeat her part, and when she did, it was with so much sense, that there was no denying her.’